It՚s the special day of the year where we honor international labor solidarity. I hereby acknowledge whatever it is I have in common with all the other people in the world who must work for a living. That՚s most of us, I guess, excluding those who have made or inherited fuck-you money. May Day is about the dream that the more lowly working stiffs, who know they will never have that degree of freedom, will at least have a small space in which they can say fuck you to those they are obligated to serve. No wonder it coincides with a pagan festival.
At my age I can՚t work up much hatred for capitalism any more. Not only am I too bought into the system, I am deeply unimpressed by all the proposed alternatives and most of the people who advocate them. Yes, there՚s something horrible about it, all the more so when you consider how capable it is of putting on a friendly face. It may be destroying the planet, it may be converting human culture into a mindless bland mass market nothing. But it՚s also feeding billions of people and producing actual life-enhancing innovations, so there՚s that. Still, just for a day, I would like to say a hearty fuck you to our economic system and all it embodies. Just for a day, then I will go back to work, and go back to giving money, the people who wield its power, and the bourgeoise virtues in general the respect they deserve.
I՚ve been part of a non-money-based world at Burning Man, but Burning Man, like May Day, lives in a special zone where dreamlike alternatives come temporarily into reality and then vanish once more into the mists. They leave us tantalized with possibility and discouraged at the default world we actually inhabit. I have a weird relationship with these sorts of collective dreams – both deeply skeptical and inexorably attracted. I think of myself as too smart or too critical to embrace these childish fantasies, but I՚m not so smart that I can live without dreams.
The dream of the labor movement and the left seems old and tired at this point. It used to offer the hope of a better world, not just materially better, but spiritually better – that is the point of solidarity, that very religious-sounding bedrock concept of leftist thought. A certain way of being among your fellow human beings – recognizing that we are all (in some sense, some of the time) working together for the same things. There՚s really nothing better than that feeling, which of course is not the exclusive property of leftist movements.
In fact the capitalists of Silicon Valley are experts at generating this feeling (or a simulacrum of it) among their employees, with team-building exercises, shared meals, and other efforts to create communal feelings. Capitalism excels in giving people what they want, and apparently people very much want something that feels like socialism.
Most people don't seem to have any problem blending this community spirit with the presence of power, money, hierarchy, and authority, but I do, and it may be one of the roots of my general difficulty with the corporate world. Oh I will take fake solidarity when I can get it, it's better than nothing, but I'll be damned if I'll confuse it with the real thing.
Or maybe working at faking solidarity is the real job we all have, maybe our greatest obligation is to do this so well that it becomes effectively real.
Previous May Day posts
Showing posts with label solidarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solidarity. Show all posts
Friday, May 01, 2015
Thursday, May 01, 2014
Vertical and Horizontal Solidarity
It՚s May Day, time for some working-class solidarity. And are not most of us workers? Employees of someone else? Unfortunately the very idea of class solidarity in America, especially in Silicon Valley, has an odor of ridiculous obsolescence. It՚s a boring and trite view of the world, compared to the technological sublime. SV culture, for all its cachet and raw intelligence, runs on the basically same toxic individualism that rules in the rest of the US and prevents any real political left from forming. It՚s just brought to a more intense level here, where everyone thinks they are or should be an entrepreneur.
The class struggle is not much in evidence here; everyone՚s just trying to get rich by making their company awesome. Companies use obvious tactics to make it seem like everyone at the company is best buddies, teammates, all working hard and happily together towards the same goal. And to some extent this works! It always amazes me that companies, despite their petty politics and obvious social pathologies, actually get shit done. Whatever their flaws, they seem to solve the general problem of goal-directed cooperation.
Doing so always seems to require a communal myth of the company, and everyone has to take part in building up this myth and everyone has to occasionally make a public display to the effect that they are bought into it. This is just as true at both excellent and crappy companies, I suspect. My current company actually does do pretty well in both mythmaking and living up to its myth. Today they chose (by coincidence I՚m sure) to give a presentation on stock options. Can՚t complain about that; stock options actually do work, they do help align labor with the interests of the organization.
So companies build what I՚m going to call vertical solidarity, that is, solidarity and loyalty within a company, between its various ranks and groupings, and to the company itself. Let՚s distinguish that from horizontal solidarity, which is solidarity to your class, profession, or community.
Both of these have their necessary uses. Companies require vertical solidarity to operate; and society requires horizontal solidarity to keep from degenerating into a hellscape. But both forms of solidarity seem to be decaying over the last few decades or so.
In the vertical dimension, the old-fashioned arrangement between company and employee, where a job was a lifetime identity, is long gone. While companies try to instill loyalty into their workforce, they rarely reciprocate. (This is not so much in evidence in technology, where employees are often the companies chief asset, but quite obvious in the most other sectors of the economy, where owners will do whatever they can to eliminate workers as an unnecessary cost),
Horizontal solidarity also seems to be on the wane, as evidenced by the diminishment of labor unions and the absence of much professional class consciousness in technology. This is a shame for several reasons. Aside from purely self-interested motives, which of course are important, professional solidarity exists so that market forces can be resisted. Lawyers and doctors seem to grasp this; computer people largely have not. There are very clear rules for professional conduct among doctors and lawyers; violate them and you are out. But there are roughly no standards of ethical conduct for computer professionals.
This might be all for the best in a field which is still defining itself. On the other hand, as software eats the world, the job of a software developer becomes increasingly important to every aspect of society. Mathematicians have noticed that the largest employer of their talents is not always acting in a a way that is a credit to their profession and a net gain for society, and have proposed setting some standards that would reign this in. Unlikely to happen, but at least they are making an effort. The organization that was making gestures towards the idea that there computer professionals as a class had some social responsibility dissolved itself a year ago.
I suspect that both horizontal and vertical solidarity are going permanently out of fashion, perhaps to be replaced by something more network-based. My real loyalty isn՚t to a company (sorry) or to a particular class or professional identity, but to various far-flung friends, and to the network of ideas and experiences that bind us together. That might not make a revolution, but in an era of general institutional turmoil and decay, it is what binds the world together.
[Past May Day posts]
The class struggle is not much in evidence here; everyone՚s just trying to get rich by making their company awesome. Companies use obvious tactics to make it seem like everyone at the company is best buddies, teammates, all working hard and happily together towards the same goal. And to some extent this works! It always amazes me that companies, despite their petty politics and obvious social pathologies, actually get shit done. Whatever their flaws, they seem to solve the general problem of goal-directed cooperation.
Doing so always seems to require a communal myth of the company, and everyone has to take part in building up this myth and everyone has to occasionally make a public display to the effect that they are bought into it. This is just as true at both excellent and crappy companies, I suspect. My current company actually does do pretty well in both mythmaking and living up to its myth. Today they chose (by coincidence I՚m sure) to give a presentation on stock options. Can՚t complain about that; stock options actually do work, they do help align labor with the interests of the organization.
So companies build what I՚m going to call vertical solidarity, that is, solidarity and loyalty within a company, between its various ranks and groupings, and to the company itself. Let՚s distinguish that from horizontal solidarity, which is solidarity to your class, profession, or community.
Both of these have their necessary uses. Companies require vertical solidarity to operate; and society requires horizontal solidarity to keep from degenerating into a hellscape. But both forms of solidarity seem to be decaying over the last few decades or so.
In the vertical dimension, the old-fashioned arrangement between company and employee, where a job was a lifetime identity, is long gone. While companies try to instill loyalty into their workforce, they rarely reciprocate. (This is not so much in evidence in technology, where employees are often the companies chief asset, but quite obvious in the most other sectors of the economy, where owners will do whatever they can to eliminate workers as an unnecessary cost),
Horizontal solidarity also seems to be on the wane, as evidenced by the diminishment of labor unions and the absence of much professional class consciousness in technology. This is a shame for several reasons. Aside from purely self-interested motives, which of course are important, professional solidarity exists so that market forces can be resisted. Lawyers and doctors seem to grasp this; computer people largely have not. There are very clear rules for professional conduct among doctors and lawyers; violate them and you are out. But there are roughly no standards of ethical conduct for computer professionals.
This might be all for the best in a field which is still defining itself. On the other hand, as software eats the world, the job of a software developer becomes increasingly important to every aspect of society. Mathematicians have noticed that the largest employer of their talents is not always acting in a a way that is a credit to their profession and a net gain for society, and have proposed setting some standards that would reign this in. Unlikely to happen, but at least they are making an effort. The organization that was making gestures towards the idea that there computer professionals as a class had some social responsibility dissolved itself a year ago.
I suspect that both horizontal and vertical solidarity are going permanently out of fashion, perhaps to be replaced by something more network-based. My real loyalty isn՚t to a company (sorry) or to a particular class or professional identity, but to various far-flung friends, and to the network of ideas and experiences that bind us together. That might not make a revolution, but in an era of general institutional turmoil and decay, it is what binds the world together.
[Past May Day posts]
Friday, February 22, 2013
Guest post: Solidarity and Recursion
I wrote another guest post over at Ribbonfarm: "Solidarity and Recursion". Please comment over there.
Monday, September 05, 2011
Solidarity forever, someday
Obligatory Labor Day post. Not too much to say today, except that being for "labor" these days seems like a sucker's game, since even the working classes for the most part can't be bothered. Solidarity is a wonderful thing, but there's a point past which it can't be salvaged and we seem to have blown past that sometime in the last 30 years or so.
I don't really believe that it's dead and replaced by the realm of total individual self-interest that was the dream of Ayn Rand and the reality of Wall Street. But the old banners -- of class, party, or ideology -- haven't held up. Something new will need to emerge, and it isn't quite there yet.
In the meantime, here's a nice instance of inter-generational continuity.
I don't really believe that it's dead and replaced by the realm of total individual self-interest that was the dream of Ayn Rand and the reality of Wall Street. But the old banners -- of class, party, or ideology -- haven't held up. Something new will need to emerge, and it isn't quite there yet.
In the meantime, here's a nice instance of inter-generational continuity.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Voting as ritual
If voting could change the system it would be against the law, I used to say in my cynical anarchist days. But now I'm a good citizen, and anti-voting sentiment strikes me as puerile. I tried to respond to TGGP in-place and ran into some kind of bug (or moderation), so am replying here as well.
I think there's an interesting comparison to be made between voting as a ritual and religious rituals, in fact. The point of religious rituals is in their collective enactment. They don't "do" anything except foster a sense of solidarity amongst their participants. But this is not at all trivial. Voting may play the same role, with the endpoint decision being less important than the ritual, and the jealously fought-for rights to participate in it.
Libertarians have a problem with this. Either they can't understand it at all, or they equate it with North Korea's mass rallies. Or they feel threatened by it. I suspect that what's going on in many libertarians is that their sense of individual identity is so weak that it feels existentially threatened by acknowledging the social nature of human existence. The Ayn Randroids are the most notable in this regard.
The libertarian distaste for politics and voting guarantees that they will remain without influence -- a good thing from my point of view, but probably not yours.Voting is a ritual of social participation. The point of voting is not (as Landsberg stupidly holds) that it is only worth doing if you stand a chance of casting the single vote that tips the balance past 50/50. The point is that you are joining in with other members of your community to make a collective decision. The act of voting is a humbling and equalizing one -- in voting you (briefly) set aside your personal identity and personal power and act as just another equal citizen among others, willing to take the economic hit for the benefit of playing their small part in the collective political ritual.
Here are some of my thoughts on voting from a couple of years ago, see especially the link to the Valdis Krebs paper.
The Landsberg piece you link to is a typically autistic piece of economist crapola. The Freakonomics boys made the same argument and I answered them there (first comment).
I think there's an interesting comparison to be made between voting as a ritual and religious rituals, in fact. The point of religious rituals is in their collective enactment. They don't "do" anything except foster a sense of solidarity amongst their participants. But this is not at all trivial. Voting may play the same role, with the endpoint decision being less important than the ritual, and the jealously fought-for rights to participate in it.
Libertarians have a problem with this. Either they can't understand it at all, or they equate it with North Korea's mass rallies. Or they feel threatened by it. I suspect that what's going on in many libertarians is that their sense of individual identity is so weak that it feels existentially threatened by acknowledging the social nature of human existence. The Ayn Randroids are the most notable in this regard.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Which side are you on?
A mailing list I'm on was having a conversation about the Catholic Church protecting child molesters which led to the subject of group formation and protection. I contributed this:
Then I saw the exact same issues come up at Abstract Nonsense, this time in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:
Years ago I had one of those dumb/smart insights -- the real conflict in life is not between the obvious sides (Israelis/Palestinians, Shia/Sunni, whatever) but between those who want conflict because they thrive on it and those who want peace so they can get on with their lives. The problem is is that the peaceniks are naturally less prone to fight (of course) and it is difficult for peaceniks on one of the ostensible sides to coordinate with those on the other. There are groups that promote negotiation on an informal level, and then there are the sort of people that Alon Levy is talking about, who try as hard as they can to prevent well-intentioned people on different sides from talking.
One more example, from which the post title is taken.
Unions have their own rather specific history of building solidarity and defining the enemy, but that's a post for another time.
I vividly recall my experience when I first did extensive travel out of the US (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). This was during the Reagan years, and all of a sudden I, who had opposed Reagan and Republicans for all my life, was now being held responsible for him. A lot of my conversations with non English speakers went something like: "Oh, American! Ronald Reagan! Bang-bang!" Those were the friendly ones. Then there were those with more hostile European Marxists where I found myself in the unaccustomed position of defending the US. It was weird being a capitalist oppressor all of a sudden.
Remember Ward Churchill and his crack about the people in the WTC being "little Eichmanns"?
I just read this rather terrible book by David Mamet, _The Wicked Son_, The book is addressed to Jews who don't identify strongly with Judaism. The thesis is basically, everybody hates the Jews so you *better* strengthen your group identification. I heard a variant this growing up, roughly "you may not consider yourself Jewish, but
the Nazis will".
There's this awful dynamic of intergroup hostility leading to stronger group identification leading to collective blame of the other side leading to more intergroup hostility. A society of mixed, peaceful, weakly-identified groups can easily precipitate out into strong and hostile groups when conditions change. The former Yugoslavia may be the purest example, and then there's Iraq right now.
Then I saw the exact same issues come up at Abstract Nonsense, this time in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:
Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post writes a wonderful article that aims to delegitimize every Palestinian political group, no matter how prepared it is for peace. The standard is always the same: nothing short of total acceptance is okay, and nothing short of total obsequity is peaceful. I see it among pro-Palestinian extremists who portray Israelis as uniformly oppressive, and among pro-Israeli extremists who portrays Palestinians as uniformly pro-terror....An Israeli who doesn’t refuse a priori to talk to anyone who’s more pro-Palestinian than Peace Now is seen as a traitor; a Palestinian who doesn’t refuse a priori to talk to anyone who’s more pro-Israeli than Rachel Corrie is seen as a collaborator.
Years ago I had one of those dumb/smart insights -- the real conflict in life is not between the obvious sides (Israelis/Palestinians, Shia/Sunni, whatever) but between those who want conflict because they thrive on it and those who want peace so they can get on with their lives. The problem is is that the peaceniks are naturally less prone to fight (of course) and it is difficult for peaceniks on one of the ostensible sides to coordinate with those on the other. There are groups that promote negotiation on an informal level, and then there are the sort of people that Alon Levy is talking about, who try as hard as they can to prevent well-intentioned people on different sides from talking.
One more example, from which the post title is taken.
Which Side Are You On?
by Florence Reese
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell
(Chorus)
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's won
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair
Unions have their own rather specific history of building solidarity and defining the enemy, but that's a post for another time.
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